Choose:
Faith
Rewarded
by Anne
Do miracles
happen today? Is the God of the Bible relevant today?
Why is there
suffering in the world, and if there is a God why does he not fix it?
These are some of the many questions asked by the ordinary man and woman
in the street today.
This is the
story – of how God ‘fixed it’ for me, and how my faith in Jesus
Christ transformed my life in a very real and physical way.
In April of 1994 I became disabled with severe back pain, I had difficulty getting down stairs and sitting at all was extremely painful. Travelling in the car was unbearable and could only be accomplished by ‘mind over matter’ thinking. Over a matter of months, I was reduced to being housebound and entirely dependant on others to shop, cook and clean for me. I felt desperate for any relief from the constant overwhelming pain and went down every medical route possible. Initially, when I became ill, I wanted to get well for my holiday – which was booked for six weeks time. To my horror I realised I was not going to get well in six weeks, or even six months. I attended numerous clinics lying in pain on the floor waiting to be seen. I had many scans of various descriptions, and was passed from the Orthopaedic Department to Rheumatology to the Pain Clinic and back again, in a vain hope something could be done. Second opinions were sought and I attended not only Macclesfield General but also the Oswestry Back Unit, The Alexandra and finally Hope hospital.
Treatments I tried ranged from multiple sessions of physiotherapy, traction, acupuncture, use of a tens and x-pain machine, steroid spinal injections and chiropractic manipulation to name but a few. I was given a wheelchair, plenty of O T equipment and one of the infamous ‘blue badges’. My eldest child had to change schools because I could no longer get him to his primary school. Social services provided a taxi to take me to school with my youngest child just because I could not walk the few hundred yards to get her there without unbearable pain. A friend had to push me to school in the wheelchair to collect her. My home became like a pharmacy and even the cocktail of drugs I was taking did not help to fix the pain!
Where was my faith in all this, and where was God? I first became a Christian in 1983 when I was reading about a girl who was healed of back pain! My conversion was a very dramatic and life changing experience and from having no church background whatsoever, I became an active believer overnight! God became a very real living personal friend who I could talk to and who talked back when I was willing to listen. I did not always listen to him and made a few mistakes - well probably quite a lot, but I always knew I was his child and that he loved and accepted me.
In the April of 1994 I was making Easter posters for our church and not being able to fit them onto my drawing board, I spent many hours stretching over the dining room table. Quite suddenly I started to experience severe pain down my right leg and across my lower back. I could not understand it, I had been doing something for God and it looked like it had made me ill. As my illness progressed and the pain became intractable my husband and young family struggled to come to terms with the fact that I was now effectively disabled and could not be the mum I was before. I wrestled with God over many issues, I felt angry and upset that my life had been turned upside down. I felt cut off from my friends, the church, and other Christians and as I could not sit for a long time we could no longer regularly attend church services. I wondered why I was not getting any better. Then I began to ask how I could use it to help others and what could be the purpose to all this pain?
“I
know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who
have been called according to his purpose.”
Romans Ch.8 verse 28
I knew God could heal, He did in the Bible and He is the same yesterday, today and forever and I hung onto that truth.
The year 2000 was especially bad and pain reached excruciating new levels. I was prescribed controlled drugs for the first time and this capped the pain and made it more bearable, if only slightly. God spoke directly to my heart through a picture given at the front of church; that He knew I felt abandoned by other Christians but that He would never abandon me. At about this time I started taking a garden reclining chair to church in order to be able to sit through services. It no longer mattered what other people thought, I could be a fool for God, I just needed to be in His presence. On one occasion whilst lying in despair on the floor at home He encouraged me with a picture of me as his child whirling me through the air in a field of flowers and this kept me close to him and showed me He was in control.
Someone at Poynton Christian Fellowship who had experienced healing herself gave me Psalm 27. Verses 13 and 14 were especially meaningful for me:
It was all well being told there was no pain and sickness in heaven, but I wanted freedom from my pain now, and God was going to have to fix me because man and modern medicine was unable to. I knew I could not demand my healing of God, but I really believed that I was going to be healed in this life and not need to wait for the next.
Meanwhile, I read books on
healing and prayer and many people prayed for me. I started to get run
down and was struck with virus after virus. A friend at a ladies weekend
retreat was given a picture that I was not just ill, but under direct
spiritual attack. When she prayed asking how I could deal with this attack
she had another picture of angels surrounding my house and praising God.
Neither of us understood what this could mean. On
“In this you greatly
rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in
all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth
than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved
genuine and may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is
revealed. Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you
do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an
inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your
faith, the salvation of your souls.”
As she gave me these verses over the phone a picture came into my head of a Shepherd guarding his sheep from a wolf prowling outside the flock. An injured sheep lay on the outer edge of the flock, but the Shepherd picked up the sheep and held it close to his heart. After this I felt that God truly loved me and two days later I was given the word to go with this picture; Isaiah 40.11.
The trauma of my prolonged, unyielding illness had taken it’s toll and there were times when I felt completely abandoned by God. I sunk into severe depression and, among other things, struggled to keep hold of the belief that I could ever become well and have a normal life again. At my very lowest God spoke to me through a dream. I saw an angel holding a child’s drawing. When I woke up the sense of God’s reality was stronger than anything I have ever felt on this side of Heaven. God’s eternal love was so real to me I felt that I had received a Heavenly kiss.
After the healing of our
marriage, things happened very quickly. We both hung onto God and church
as though our lives depended on it. We attended morning and evening
services and I went to a midweek fellowship group as well. During one of
the ‘Spirit and you’ services our minister was given a picture for us. He
saw us on a journey; a roadway with doors. He told us that it was not an
easy journey, that each door was a different step and that we were now
moving onwards and not to look back. He prayed with us for ‘normality’
(my daughter was rather unhappy that we were considered abnormal!). I was
subsequently given a picture of a door opening and then fully open. I
could see a long straight path to the
I started to follow God
very closely even when it was difficult. I received opposition and was
under severe spiritual attack in several relationships with other
Christians. The only person I could fully trust was God. I hung on for
dear life and I was nudged to get rid of various objects that had a
connection with my past life and which were holding me back in my
relationship with God. By getting rid of these I was freed up for worship
and service to Him. I knew that God’s promises were real and they became
more so every day. I attempted to follow his word and do his work in spite
of the pain. In a way, the pain became irrelevant – it was more
important to seek his face and walk his path than be well. God gave me the
vision to do a big outreach event whilst on a long painful journey to
“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness’”
and that as stated in Luke 1.37,
“For nothing is impossible with God.”
At the beginning of the year I was called to help a homeless man, and I hardly dared believe it when the words of Isaiah 58.7-9. were given to me.
“Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and He will say: Here am I.”
On the night of the 14th
of November of this year, God visited me in a dream and told me that He
was healing me and that I would no longer be in pain. I awoke repeating
the words, ‘The power and glory are His, I feel no pain,’
over and over again. I heard my husband wake up next to me and then it hit
my conscious mind; I had been in the presence of my creator and He had
told me I was healed! I leapt out of bed and started crying with gratitude
that the awful pain I had suffered for over 10 long years had finally
gone. My daughter woke up wondering what was happening and I yelled out,
‘I am well! I am well!’ at the top of my voice. I began to laugh and
cry and touched my toes nearly one hundred times. I felt the spirit of God
really resting upon me at this time and I could not help but leap around
and praise God. My daughter suggested we thank God a thousand times for
this miracle, and I replied that even if I were to thank him a thousand
times for every minute of every day for the rest of my life it still would
have been insufficient praise to His glorious name and power. We
telephoned our son at university after this happened at
We went to church the next morning and I told the surprised congregation how the Lord God Almighty had healed me from the pain. Since then I have returned my wheelchair and O T equipment as well as cutting up my disability badge. All my painkillers have been returned to the pharmacist to be disposed of properly and I have been discharged from Hope hospital. My pain consultant was suitably amazed (to say the least) by the sudden change in my progress!
The follow up to all this is that my son started attending his local church on the morning after we rang him, and has since made a commitment after a sermon at a carol service this Christmas.
The Lord told me eight years ago that he wanted to give me the gift of public speaking. I was horrified! I spoke in confidence to someone in the leadership, not mentioning the specific gift I felt God was telling me about. She advised that by the time I got the gift, I would be running towards it with open arms and now I find that I am!
“Here is a trustworthy
saying:
if we died with
him, we will also live with him;
if we
endure, we
will also reign with him.
If we
disown him,
he will also disown us;
if we are
faithless,
he will remain faithful,
for he cannot disown
himself.”
2 Timothy 2: 11-13.
10-Jan-05
A short version of this true story appears on page 2 of the Poynton Post (January 05)